The Internet has become an increasingly popular tool for locating geographic locations. Popular map services, such as MapQuest®, present interactive maps that users can use to locate a specific location. By simply providing a street address or identifying an intersection, one can quickly map the location. While such services provide an accurate map, they do not tell the user anything about what the location actually looks like.
Today's map services are going one step beyond generating a map. In addition to mapping locations, traditional map services are displaying aerial photographs or satellite images of various locations. For example, on-line services such as Windows® Live Local Search or Google® Maps provides an aerial view of nearly every location on the planet. Aerial views, however, only provide a limited view of a given location, making it difficult to understand exactly what is being viewed.
Another exemplary service, offered by Amazon's A9® or the technology preview of Windows® Live local, enables a user to select a location on a map within a list of cities and browse through photographs of that location. The photographs for the selected location are presented to the user in a slideshow. The slideshow simply displays the photographs, however, the direction each photograph was taken from or the time, angle, or perspective of each photograph is not provided. As a result, it is difficult for the user to ascertain what the location actually looks like.
For example, suppose a user selects an intersection of two roads to view. The corresponding photographs associated with that intersection would then be displayed. But without knowing which direction the photographs were taken, the user cannot determine where objects depicted in the photographs are located. Consequently, the user must guess what the specified location actually looks like from the images provided. In addition, the photographs may not be current, showing objects at the intersection that no longer exist. Or the user may wish to view photographs of the intersection from years ago. Thus, today's map services provide no such flexibility, and the user experience suffers because the perspective of what is being viewed cannot accurately be determined.
Furthermore, today's interactive map services do not provide a way to interact with a panoramic (360°) image such that a user can determine the actual location of the scene displayed by the panorama. Traditionally, when panoramic images are displayed on an interactive map, they are commonly displayed with a specific view direction that can be selectively changed. One example of such an image is the “virtual tour” feature used in many web sites for apartment and house listings. A user can interact with a panoramic display and change its view direction. However this experience is disjoint from the map. In an analog case to the case of viewing street-side images, the user had to mentally map the images, to position and orientation in the map.